肉欲の行為
by Dorminchu
Summary: True friends are hard to come by in such a wretched place as this.


i.

There's a new person in the schoolhouse. Hair stringy and dark like pitch, silent, tattoos spread from the corners of his thin, dry mouth so it's always curved in the suggestion of a smirk.

Sabitsuki wonders what such a fierce guy is doing in her dream.

She ignores him for the moment, stalking through the other classrooms looking for other Kaibutsu to kill. Finding none, she realizes she must have scared them all off. Relieved, yet mildly disappointed, she returns to the room with the boy.

She approaches because there's nothing else to do, and realizes he's not alone. There's a little girl behind him. Black haired, frail, cowering. (And there's a memory in that moment, fear and hatred as she sees another girl, another room—

The scent of sweat and urine and despair. Rotten blood, menstrual blood, fresh blood. Girls, girls crowding her in, whispering, jeering, shrieking. Dark-hair and dark eyes in dirty hospice gowns and little string-boned arms, reaching, clawing. She thinks of meat-hooks and corpses and the electronic beat of heart monitors. Stabs one of them through the neck, watching her fall, watching blood bubble out of her mouth. The others all scatter like leaves in wind, like dominoes, temporarily. Too many, they keep coming back, they keep whispering and she hates them, she hates them but she won't be here forever, she has to keep moving—)

In present time, Sabitsuki's dainty hand clenches around a small, heavy pistol—not that she actually knows how to use it, but that's not important—and she aims at this shadow.

The boy stops grinning.

Three seconds later and she wakes up, a hoarse gasp caught on her lips and her heart pounding against her ribs. She reaches for the pills at her bedside and resolves that she won't do that again.

ii.

But she tries again the next night, without the gun. Same reaction.

He remembers her.

iii.

She comes back, keeps her distance. In her mind, she dubs him Smile.

To say that their relationship has a rocky start is no exaggeration. Smile is kind of intense even though he's built like a scarecrow.

Yet they are a fearsome duo; he with his hammer and she with her battered, rusty sewer pipe. The Kaibutsu don't stand a chance.

Afterward, spotted with blood and bits of flesh and brain matter, they joke about their situation.

Actually, she does all the talking. Smile never talks. Which is fine, she doesn't come here to talk with him.

But he does watch her a lot. And she notices.

iv.

It happens one session, impromptu - he pins her up against a rotting wall, just after she's pulled her weapon free from the mouth of the last Kaibutsu. The adrenaline heralds another kind of rush with the cold wall pressing against her back.

She's splayed, open to him.

Smile leans in.

He smells like salt and ash and raw meat, tastes the same.

Animal magnetism, she thinks.

He's curious and not too considerate, but it's her dream, and if that's how she wants it, then that's how it's going to be.

But she doesn't trust him. Ever. She doesn't trust. She's just using him in the same way he's using her. Physical carnality, simple and easy and unquestionable.

It's better that way.

v.

Like many things in the flow, she grows restless. Bored.

She leaves him in his moldy classroom and he does not follow.

vi.

There's another girl in the underwater city, pale and free like her. Unlike her, she wears an orange diving helmet and putters around aimlessly.

Curious, Sabitsuki approaches, taps Diving-Helmet Girl on the shoulder. The other girl pauses. Turns around. Sizing Sabitsuki up. Then she bends down and strains to lift something from the mud. Pulling it free, Diving-Helmet Girl turns and bears in her arms another, older helmet. She offers it to Sabitsuki.

Sabitsuki takes it. It's heavy. Slippery with scum.

The other girl taps her own helmet with palms.

Sabitsuki regards the disgusting object. She puts it on and finds it clean on the inside.

Diving-Helmet Girl claps, mute but obvious in her delight.

And Sabitsuki decides she'll spare her.

xii.

In the waking world, Sabitsuki grows older. Sicker.

They give her a rainbow of pills and no words of comfort.

She slips further into her dreams and tries to stay longer.

Things change. Kaibutsu are gone, replaced with red-raw, fleshy monsters with black claws and iron-sharp teeth.

They can kill.

xiii.

Sabitsuki finds Diving-Helmet Girl in a sprawling maze of wires, in her own small tank. Frailer than ever, ghostly in the liquid and underlit machine.

Diving-Helmet Girl has a name. Oreko. Sabitsuki taps her metal pipe against the heavy glass.

And Oreko waves.

Sabitsuki feels a strange sense of loss.

xv.

One day, she returns. She's a little older, a little colder. Not the same girl inside.

She sees him standing in the same room. He's never moved.

Smile, she calls out.

He doesn't react.

And she reaches out to him; a tentative, girlish gesture. He freezes. Slowly, slowly, he cups her face in his hands.

She passes her own hand over one of his. Closes her eyes, trying to remember how it feels to be touched. When she opens them, he's still staring at her.

She manages a small, shaky smile.

He flashes a wide, toothy grin, ear to ear, and cracks her pretty head open against the dusty chalkboard.

-end-


End file.
